


The Sounds of Silence

by betteroffbad



Category: 4'33" - John Cage (Song)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 17:38:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21360079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betteroffbad/pseuds/betteroffbad
Summary: Sometimes when you go to a music venue, you get both less and more than you expect.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 21
Collections: Yuletide Madness 2019





	The Sounds of Silence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlexSeanchai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexSeanchai/gifts).

> NB: this is a poem, not the song of the same title by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (which does not actually contain any silence).

I went to the new concert hall in my town  
Dressed up in a suit of deep velveteen brown  
And ties of rich silk made all purple and glossy  
Hoping to see the fine works of Bob Fosse

Or else J.S. Bach, there's a guy who gets down  
Imagine how deeply I started to frown  
When snug in my seat with my program in hand  
My attention was called to the lack of a band

The conductor got up and said, folks, it's in silence  
That we now have to seek for an end to all violence  
He lifted his arms with the music stick thingy  
I felt my poor heart get all fluttering-wingy . . . 

For his two hands stopped short as if they'd hit a wall  
And from the dark pit there came NO SOUND AT ALL  
NO MUSIC. NO COUGHING. NO RESONANT VOICES  
NOT ONE OF THE NINE TRILLION POSSIBLE CHOICES

I sat in the blackness, my suit growing sweaty  
My feathered heart flapping like a pigeon named Betty  
I thought I could hear in the silence unending  
Its beating, the rush of my blood, my knees bending

My spit being washed like a tide 'gainst my teeth  
The blink of my eye sounded loud as a shutter  
Being clattered down over one shop or another  
I started to turn, just to look to one side-

My neck popped so loudly that I almost died!  
But when does it START, my heart screamed to itself  
I looked down at the program I'd nicked from the shelf  
And there in the dimness, a sight to appall:

This new composition was NOTHING AT ALL.  
BARE SILENCE. I started to panic a little  
I searched left and right like a punk for acquittal  
How long would it last? Was it minutes, or HOURS?

How long had it gone on? Would these anxious towers  
of terror within me be gently imploded  
by sound, any sound, precious sound? My heart goaded  
me simply to LEAVE THERE, however disruptively  
and rush to the street whose sweet noise would unfluster me  
And yet I sat still, a noisemaker unmanned  
By muffled night bound in my body's loud band

What madman would do this? I wondered. What scrub?  
I could have been sitting at home in my tub  
With Mannheim Steamroller on full blast while trees  
scrip-scraped with their fingers in night's gentle breeze  
I could have brought earbuds, if I'd known ahead of time  
and grooved to my own private sounds through this hellish time

Now why did I pay ninety dollars a seat  
To something so clearly not meant as a treat?  
If I wanted silence, by God, I would get some  
for FREE in my OWN HOUSE, not dressed up and fretsome  
Alone in the front row of this concert venue  
Just wishing for some kind of SOUND on the menu!

But there I was, creaking and breathing a storm up  
More nervous than when, to my college girl's dorm up  
I crept with a box of cheap chocolates and corsage  
Wondering if life would get better or worsage

At last, silence ended. I don't know how long  
I had sat in my seat being wrapped in this "song"  
But it felt like an age. I expected to see  
In the cracked men's room mirror, some phantom of me  
Yet nothing had changed. Somehow time had not passed

The stars had not gone out. I burst forth at last  
To the street and its sounds, to the wind and my breath  
I felt like I'd smashed down the back doors of death  
And run through a parking lot dusted with snow!  
Now who would compose such a thing? I don't know!

My program I left on the seat in my haste  
To escape from that long bleak unmusical waste  
I asked my niece later she said idk dude  
but running out like that was probably way rude

I said hey I respect your entire generation  
but having been through many kinds of privation  
this lack of distraction's not something I muck with  
a mind is a terrible thing to be stuck with

So as I breathed in all of the clamour and clutter  
Of Life and its lushness, I started to mutter  
"My goodness! I wonder if THAT WAS THE POINT  
ALL ALONG of the silence dispensed in that joint!

Maybe I was SUPPOSED to be upset  
So I could appreciate all that I get  
When I walk out the door! Hey, that's brilliant!" I bellowed  
And to everyone out on the sidewalk I helloed!

Then later while thinking it over I thought  
In the midst of what I thought was silence I'd caught  
Not only my own sounds but others beside me  
A symphony seething outside and inside me

Well now, I thought, sir, that is ALSO quite smart!  
I never know quite what to feel in my heart  
But I know that I felt something reckless and strange  
When that silence came seeping my soul to derange

Now music is great and the lack of it's also  
A beautiful thing, though I hope things might fall so  
I won't have to pay ninety dollars a pop  
In the future to learn that the song doesn't stop

Just because the musicians are not in their seats  
I can enjoy the fine sounds of the world and their beats  
In the world in a way much less pricey  
Just by walking outside when it's sunny or icy  
Or sitting a minute inside my own kitchen  
Without shelling out ninety bucks to sit twitching.

Today was the first day I sat on a chair  
And listened to sounds as they swam everywhere  
The trees and the wires caught the wind as it sang  
And clattering leaves in my ears how they rang

Today when I listen to sounds all around me  
I think of that concert, how anxious it found me  
And how I rushed out as if out of a cell  
And found music with me, and knew all was well.


End file.
